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Thursday, January 15, 2015

I had to venture out to downtown L.A. today, and you know where I go, Wallet Card goes.

Parking being what it is downtown, I ended up parking about five blocks away from my destination, but that worked out alright, because it afforded me a great chance for some unexpected exercise on a very nice day to be out walking around.

I was born in downtown L.A., and I love this little chunk of cityscape that we have here, so I took advantage of the opportunity and whipped out ol' Sandy Koufax to join me on my city walkabout.

I noticed today that Wallet Card's edges are starting to softly bend and conform to the curvature of my wallet. I then opened the cheap camera on my phone and got to snappin'...

Here's Sandy mugging in front of the world-famous Disney music hall (or whatever they call this brushed steel monstrosity).

Actually, I really dig this building, and she was in great form bouncing off the morning sunlight today.

Believe it or not, back when Sandy was owning this town on a small mound of dirt just a few miles behind this shot, and I was growing up on a hunk of concrete just a few miles beyond this shot, that beautiful, bullet-headed building, L.A. City Hall, was the tallest structure in the city.

Now of course, our little downtown area has got much taller buildings cropping up all over the place.

Saturday, January 10, 2015

Since the HOF recently inducted some new members, today ATBATT presents a binder page featuring some of the giants of the game - men who long ago earned plaques on those hallowed walls.

The other reason I put this page together is I love Gypsy Queen cards. More than that, I love their inserts, and yet even more, I treasure those that have come to me in trades from all of you.

Most of these cards came to me through trades, so you may recognize one you sent to me in the past. Even if you didn't send one of these to me, you may recognize a great player from the past for your favorite team.

Leading off is one of my all-time favorite players, and my vote for the best catcher ever...

The extra bonus on this card is it features two members of The Big Red Machine (Bench and Davey Concepcion), but more than that, BOTH players on this card had their numbers retired by the Reds.

Tris Speaker is one of my favorites because he's got a name that was destined for baseball greatness, and he's got one of those cool old-time baseball sayings - his outfield position was "where triples go to die".

And now a New York double headuh...

How's this for a classic Yogism: "I really didn't say all those things I said."

Another one of the greatest ever...

Continuing the domination of this page by east coast teams...

Sure DiMaggio was a great player, but he also married the woman that most American males over the age of 13 dreamed about.

Aint these Hallmark Heroes absolutely beautiful cards? We started with Bench, so let's close out with Johnny B launching another one....

Monday, January 5, 2015

In a stroke of genius, Gavin from the always innovative Baseball Card Breakdownhas given our little corner of the blogosphere the first big craze of 2015 - the game of which everybody's heard....don't say it...

Wallet Card!!!!

(Wallet Card is played by carrying around a baseball card in your wallet for one year, while shooting periodic photos of it in interesting places throughout the year)

Well, I've gotta play too, but like many of us, I just couldn't settle on which card to give the honor of being my Wa....

SHHHHHHH...I don't want Peter up there to hear it and get started again, so I'll just show you.

Let's begin with the runner ups...

Since Andre Ethier has been the survivor of so much offseason trade speculation, I figured his Topps Chrome card might best survive a year in my wallet.

Then again, the best choice for this adventure might be a card that features the patron saint of ATBATT...

Then I considered since this is really an old school game, how about using an old school Dodger who doesn't get a whole lot of love from the card companies...

I thought this might be a good way to raise Furillo's image in the hobby a bit.

Then again, since we're playing this game in the modern era, maybe I should go with a card featuring one of the new stars in the game...

Boy, the choice was difficult. I really couldn't settle on one, so I put all of the potential cards in a pile, gave it a few random shuffles, and chose the card which found its way to the top.

Presenting my entry for the game - already featured in its very first photo...

2012 Topps Archives Sandy Koufax

Since Sandy is a reminder of the Dodgers' past, I chose to take his first pic teamed up with a relic from the past.

Gavin, you had a great idea, and it's my pleasure to participate in Wallet....oops....

Which meant although I hit the "publish" button at 10 a.m. this morning, it didn't update on anyone's blogrolls until after midnight here on the west coast and after 3 a.m. in the east. This also meant it updated on your blogrolls as happening 14 hours ago, thus pushing it off the page of most blogrolls, never to be seen.

So here I am, writing a new post (about my last post) in the hopes that this will show up on blogrolls now, or maybe 14 hours later, which will be tomorrow morning, and my original post will eventually be read. SHEESH!!

If anybody has had this happen, and you fixed it, of course I would appreciate a little help with the problem.

One other weird thing that happened was, about the same time my blog stopped updating in a timely manner, spam comments began to appear.

I've been blogging 3 years now and NEVER got a spam comment until now. The first time that showed up was on my recent Nolan Ryan post, which coincidentally (?) was the first with delayed updating, and that post got three spam comments!

In all these years I never used one of those captcha things because I hate them myself, and I figured it would stifle people from leaving comments because they don't want the hassle. Unfortuantely, it looks like I may have to go that route for the time being.

I hadn't changed any blog settings, so I'm at a loss as to what the heck is going on.

Sunday, January 4, 2015

You may recall I previously mentioned a side project that I've been working on. It's a website!

I only hinted at it because at the time I was still learning how to build one, and the site itself was sorely lacking in content. Besides all that, I wasn't exactly sure how much any of you all would be interested in the subject matter.

I'm using the Hit (Me) King, Pete Rose, to help me out with introducing my site because this is ATBATT, after all, and Mr. Rose is tangentially connected to my other website through his (not so) tangential connection to gambling.

"Say Healy, what's the "action" on me gettin' a base hit?"

As we all know, ATBATT exists because of my loves for baseball, the baseball card hobby, and the camaraderie that springs from those.

My other website is connected to another one of my hobbies - playing poker. I've loved playing the game ever since I was introduced to it as a teenager with my uncles and cousins around the kitchen table.

"What's wrong with bettin' on baseball, fer cryin' out loud? I'll betcha I got a single on this here swing"

Playing poker is another one of my hobbies, and I definitely love the camaraderie that can be attached to it. I've been playing regularly with a group of poker friends once a month, every month, for the past 12 years. When we get together, although it's nice to win, the point is not to take everyone's money so much as it's about getting together with the boys for a night of eatin, drinkin', smokin' big ol' cigars, and having a ton of laughs.

"I lost my bottom batting glove to Clemente betting on "Grass or Mound."

The audience of my other site isn't necessarily meant to be hardcore poker players or gamblers. As a matter of fact, advanced players and poker snobs would probably scoff at the level of basic knowledge I'm presenting there.

The site is mainly for folks who are casual poker players who want to raise their game a bit, and to help take away some of the intimidation that people might feel when it comes to playing poker outside of their homes.

Lots of folks out there would love to take a shot at playing poker and entering poker tournaments in Las Vegas or their local casinos. Maybe they just want to join the game their brother-in-law keeps inviting them to, but they feel intimidated - and that's where my site comes in.

It's my hope that I can drop a bit of knowledge and tips to equalize the field and help people to feel more comfortable about joining in on the fun. So follow the advice of ol' "Wooden Nickel" Pete....

"That's right folks. Stop on by Stealing Homes' other website Winning At Texas Holdemand tell'em "All In" Pete sent ya...By the way, I heard ya can't go wrong with Ol' Gum Legs in the fourth at Hialeah."